After dinner last night we caught a few hours of sleep. This morning we ate a wonderful breakfast with some superb coffee prior to catching a flight to Lilongwe, Malawi.

We often hear that God works in wondrous ways. Sometimes it’s hard to see. Sometimes it smacks you in the face. We experienced the latter while standing in line to board our flight when we (Cayce) started talking with a woman standing by us. She heads up US Aid efforts for seven southern African countries including Malawi.  She has a PhD in health and development with a focus on water issues with 20+ years of experience.

Needless to say, she was full of tons of good information.  Ironically, when we asked her where she’s from the answer was Prairie Village, KS and she went to Shawnee Mission East High School!  Yes, I’m singing it’s a small world after all.

When arrived in Lilongwe we received an extremely warm welcomes from Moty, Hugo, Chifundo, Felix and Stanley. After a brief stop at the hotel we took a van to Madisi (which is roughly 90 minutes north and west of Lilongwe) where we met with roughly 20 leaders involved with CCODE. This is a group Resurrection has been working with to provide basic business training and to establish local savings and lending groups as part of the economic empowerment initiative. This is a new initiative in 2017 but the initial results have proven surprisingly strong.  The groups have funded peanut farms, backed charcoal  operations and purchased chickens for breeding. Even with relatively risky loans, we heard of only one very small nonpayment.

We drove back to Lilongwe for dinner ironically at a restaurant called The Korean Garden. Not what I expected in Malawi but the food was wonderful. Dinner included the Resurrection team, the Malawi United Methodist Church Economic Empowerment team, two representatives of CCODE along with Chifundo (our driver) who rivaled only Cayce for getting laughs out of me!